Your votes are in - all 4260 of them - and the winner is clear: Joss Whedon. Best known as the brains behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Whedon claimed the first and second slots on our poll for his short lived 2002 TV series, Firefly, and its silver-screen extension, Serenity. (Visit our ongoing forum and have your say on your favourite sci-fi works, here)

The Fox network only aired 11 episodes of Firefly, and not in the right order at that. But strong DVD sales of the series (No.5 in amazon.com DVD rankings) helped convince Universal Studios to back the film version. To date, Serenity has pulled in $20 million in US sales and reached the No.2 ranking at the box office. In the UK, it opened as the No.1 film on 7 October.

Following not so close behind in third place was the Aussie-filmed TV show Farscape, produced by the Jim Henson Company. The show ran from 1999 to 2003, collecting a horde of dedicated fans. Many of them seemed dedicated, in particular, to uber-beautiful leads Ben Browder and Claudia Black. According to TV Guide, after the SciFi (US) Channel cancelled the show female fans actually mailed execs their bras to show their "support" for a renewal. It was fan participation like this that eventually led to a new mini-series in 2004 called Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars. My only concern? What they will mail in now.

At No.4 on the list was Douglas Adams' 1979 book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Originally a BBC Radio 4 series, broadcast weekly in the spring of 1978, the Guide's comic take on space exploration has been produced as a TV show, movie, comic, computer game, several novels, and then back to radio again. They say syndication is the sincerest form of flattery.

TV show Babylon 5 fittingly fills the No.5 slot on our list. The Emmy award-winning space opera ran from 1994 to 1998. The real hook seems to have been creator J Michael Straczynski use of the "story arc". Unlike some other long running sci-fi shows, Babylon 5 had epic overarching plot lines, which connected each episode and season - a contrast from the 45-minute "challenge/freak of the week" scenario exemplified by many Star Trek series. The story arc, say fans, made it one of the most enjoyably addictive TV experiences ever.

Congratulations to our prize winner! Joseph Vandusen from Tennessee, US, was the first name picked out of our virtual hat and wins all the DVDs and books from the overall Top 10. Joseph - enjoy!

At No.6 sits Battlestar Gallactica. The original TV show, which ran for only a year in 1978, did not have the high production values and super special effects that today's viewer are used to. Some even called it cheesy. But the lone Battlestar sailed into the hearts of old and new fans alike in a SciFi (US) Channel mini-series in 2003, written by Ronald D Moore, a veteran writer of some superb Star Trek episodes. The new TV series of Battlestar Gallactica began its current run on the SciFi Channel in 2004.

Seventh place goes to Frank Herbert's epic novel Dune. Originally published in 1965, Dune was the first novel to win a Nebula award, one of Sci-Fi's top prizes. It also picked up a Hugo award in 1966, the second jewel in modern science fiction writing crowns. Praised for its meticulous depiction of the politics, religion and culture in a far away and troubled universe, Dune has become one of the widest read sci-fi sagas of all time. Herbert went on to write five more novels in the Dune chronicles. And when he died in 1986, Herbert's son Brian picked up the plot and kept them coming. Sometimes referred to as the Lord of the Rings of science fiction, Dune has been made as a film and TV series.

Orson Scott Card's 1985 book Ender's Game claims the No.8 spot. Like Dune, Ender's Game scooped both a Nebula (1985) and Hugo (1986) award. And, also like Dune, Ender's Game kicked off a vast series of novels that followed upon the original's success. A story of alien insect invasion and the super-smart kids bred to lead the army against them, this book is on the reading list for officer training in the military and has been used as a textbook' on the psychology of leadership.

At No.9 sits the most critically acclaimed of all George Lucas' Star Wars films, The Empire Strikes Back. Ironically, Lucas neither directed nor wrote the script for this episode, though he wrote the story. It was released in 1980, following the enormous, box-office-record-crushing success of the first movie, then known simply as Star Wars. The Empire Strikes Back was a much darker and better acted film and revealed the best-ever Star Wars secret: super bad-guy Darth Vader was good-guy Luke Skywalker's father.

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